There is no hope in returning to a traditional faith after it has once been abandoned, since the essential condition in the holder of a traditional faith is that he should not know he is a traditionalist.

The United States of Poverty and Inequality

New report shows that no matter which state you live in, the 1% are making even more gains as the rest fall back

- Jon Queally, staff writer

From 1979 to 2011, the average income of the bottom 99 percent of U.S. taxpayers grew by 18.9 percent, while the average income of the top 1 percent grew over 10 times as much—by 200.5 percent. (Image: Common Dreams)Over the last three decades the wealth of the nation's very richest 1% has grown ten times that of the average worker and over that time period that same tiny elite has captured more than half of the entire income increases, leaving the bottom 99% to divide the remaining gains.

This is all based on a new state-level study, The Increasingly Unequal States of America: Income Inequality by State, which looks at how inequality has seized hold of the national economy both in the generation leading up to the great recession of 2008 and in the several years following where a so-called "recovery" was experienced by the financial elite while the majority of U.S. population continues to claw its way back.

“The levels of inequality we are seeing across the country provide more proof that the economy is not working for the vast majority of Americans and has not for decades,” said Mark Price, an economist at the Keystone Research Center, who co-authored the report on behalf of the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN). “It is unconscionable that most of America’s families have shared in so little of the country’s prosperity over the last several decades.”

Check out the interactive state-by-state map on inequality generated by the study's authors.

Numerous studies in recent years have exposed the persistent pattern of income and wealth inequality in the United States, but as Price's co-author Estelle Sommeiller explains, “our study shows that this one percent economy is not just a national story but is evident in every state, and every region.”

Though some states show higher levels of inequality, the pattern nationally is firm. What is also made clear by the study is the degree to which specific policies--including the writing of tax law, the climate set for labor conditions, and the setting of wages--have all contributed directly to this pattern where those at the very top benefit from a growing economy and those at the bottom receive increasingly less reward for their hard work.

“It’s clear that policies were set to favor the one percent and those policies can, and should, be changed,” Doug Hall, director of the EARN program said. “In order to have widespread income growth, bold policies need to be enacted to increase the minimum wage, create low levels of unemployment, and strengthen the rights of workers to organize.”

Among the report's key findings:

In four states (Nevada, Wyoming, Michigan, and Alaska), only the top 1 percent experienced rising incomes between 1979 and 2007, and the average income of the bottom 99 percent fell.

In another 15 states the top 1 percent captured between half and 84 percent of all income growth between 1979 and 2007. Those states are Arizona (where 84.2 percent of all income growth was captured by the top 1 percent), Oregon (81.8 percent), New Mexico (72.6 percent), Hawaii (70.9 percent), Florida (68.9 percent), New York (67.6 percent), Illinois (64.9 percent), Connecticut (63.9 percent), California (62.4 percent), Washington (59.1 percent), Texas (55.3 percent), Montana (55.2 percent), Utah (54.1 percent), South Carolina (54.0 percent), and West Virginia (53.3 percent).

In the 10 states in which the top 1 percent captured the smallest share of income growth, the top 1 percent captured between about a quarter and just over a third of all income growth. Those states are Louisiana (where 25.6 percent of all income growth was captured by the top 1 percent), Virginia (29.5 percent), Iowa (29.8 percent), Mississippi (29.8 percent), Maine (30.5 percent), Rhode Island (32.6 percent), Nebraska (33.5 percent), Maryland (33.6 percent), Arkansas (34.0 percent), and North Dakota (34.2 percent).

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Most people are unaware that the third-largest nuclear disaster in world history occurred in New Mexico.

Less than four months after the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown in 1979, three times as much radiation was released when a spill at a uranium mill at Church Rock, New Mexico, dumped 94 million gallons of mill effluent and more than 1,000 tons of acidic, radioactive sludge into an arroyo that emptied into the Puerco River.

The only two nuclear disasters that have released more radiation were those at Fukushima and Chernobyl.

Like other indigenous peoples whose reservations happened to have uranium deposits the federal government, and later private companies, desired, the Navajo were not warned of the dangers of radiation.

The Navajo Nation, where the spill occurred, is riddled with 521 abandoned uranium mines across the three states included within the reservation, according to the EPA; 450 of those mines and eight former uranium mill sites are in New Mexico, and three of these are designated superfund sites. These sites are the source of contamination for tens of millions of gallons of groundwater and countless acres, the brunt of which is on Navajo land.

Like other indigenous peoples whose reservations happened to have uranium deposits the federal government, and later private companies, desired, the Navajo were not warned of the dangers of radiation.

Unexplained Respiratory Problems

Larry King is one of them.

"I just got through two months of battling respiratory problems that had me in the hospital," King told Truthout. "There was an unofficial survey done by an organization working to log former miners, and they found a lot of us were complaining of unexplained respiratory problems. That's what I have, unexplained respiratory problems, but I know where they came from."

King attributes his sickness to his former job working in a uranium mine as a surveyor for United Nuclear Corporation (UNC), the company responsible for the 1979 Church Rock spill.

"I strongly believe I'm sick because of the years I worked underground," King continued. "My job was to be behind miners, and I had to make trips into tunnels not ventilated, which had high readings of radon gas, and being exposed daily to contaminated water, Radon, diesel fumes and dust."

For months after his job ended, King said he was "coughing up black stuff in my phlegm, or it was coming out of my nose."

Now on to his second doctor trying to find proper treatment, his efforts continue to be unsuccessful, and his health continues to decline.

"I can't work for a long time or I get fatigued and short on breath," King said. "I was breathing contamination for seven hours a day for years, and I explained this, but my doctor just keeps giving me antibiotics and inhalers."

And King is far from alone. Thousands of former uranium mine and mill workers remain sick with symptoms that have now been attributed to their work, as well as countless other people, mostly indigenous, who live in close proximity to these contaminated sites.

Navajo families have bathed, showered, washed clothes in, played in, and drank radioactive water. Their men worked in the mines while breathing carcinogenic gasses, then spread radionuclides throughout their families simply by returning home from work.

In New Mexico, a disproportionate number of unremediated uranium mine and mill sites are on lands traditionally used and occupied by the Navajo. Thus, a disproportionate amount of pollution from uranium sites occurs in Navajo communities, so the Navajo continue to bear the brunt of the health problems associated with these toxic sites.

Navajo families have bathed in, showered in, washed clothes in, played in and drunk radioactive water. Their men worked in the mines while breathing carcinogenic gases then spread radionuclides throughout their families simply by returning home from work. But it wasn't until the spill was designated as a superfund site in 1983 that the Navajo who were being irradiated and sickened for more than 30 years learned the truth.

Chris Shuey, an environmental health specialist with the Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC) in Albuquerque, has been working with Navajo communities affected by uranium mining and milling for more than 30 years. "The health of people living near the uranium mines and mills, and the communities impacted by uranium mining and processing have not been well-studied," Shuey told Truthout.

Many Navajo families live within 50 feet of old uranium mine and mill sites. (Photo: New Mexico Environmental Law Center)

But he and SRIC have been studying the impacts since the uranium-mining era ended by the mid-1960s.

"What has been known for decades is the men working in the early mines were suffering from excess risk and incidence of respiratory disease, malignant and nonmalignant lung cancer and disease at rates far beyond rates in the rest of the US," Shuey said.

vrijdag 21 februari 2014

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